# Add horizontal line before table caption

I have a table that I use the following code to produce:

\begin{table}[h!]
\centering
\hline\noalign{\smallskip}
%\vspace{-0.3cm}
\caption{ \textit{The percentages of all three cases of paired-end read alignments by HMMER and Short-Pair for the RNA-Seq data. HMMER w/o filtration" : running HMMER by turning off all filtration steps. HMMER GA cutoff": applying HMMER with gathering thresholds.}}
\label{tab:ArabThreeCases2}
%\vspace{-0.3cm}
\begin{tabular}{lllllll}
\hline\noalign{\smallskip}
Case& A, & B,  & C, & D\\
& $E$-value 10 & w/o filtration,  & GA cutoff &\\
&  & $E$-value 10 & & \\
\noalign{\smallskip}
\hline
\noalign{\smallskip}
Case 1 &    34.51\% &   32.83\% &   22.51\% & 0.42\%\\
Case 2 &    28.42\% &   31.58\% &   8.84\%  & 62.51\%\\
Case 3 &    37.07\% &   35.59\% &   68.65\% & 37.07\%\\
\hline
\end{tabular}{}
\end{table}

The table created has an horizontal line before the table caption, which is what I want. But as you can see this horizontal line has a different length than the other horizontal lines in the table. I want all of them to have the same length (The length of the line above the caption). How would I achieve that?

• How many of such tables do you have? Is this something that is particular to this table, or does it have to apply to all tables? – Werner Mar 24 '17 at 18:13
• It has to be applied to all tables. – fhcat Mar 24 '17 at 18:17
• Do you want to shrink only the line or also the caption? – Marco Daniel Mar 24 '17 at 18:22
• I don't want to shrink the line. I want to expand all other lines to make them same length as the line above the caption. – fhcat Mar 24 '17 at 18:23
• BTW: You have declared 8 columns (of type l), but you are using only 5. And you can add extra space simply using \\[\smallskipamount] instead of \\\noalign{\smallskip} or better use booktabs. – Schweinebacke Mar 24 '17 at 18:49

Like this?

This table use combination of tabularx environment with S column typef for column with numbers:

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper,openright,oneside]{article}
\usepackage[font=small,
labelfont=bf,
textfont=it,
skip=1ex
]{caption}
\usepackage{booktabs, tabularx}
\newcommand\mc[1]{\multicolumn{1}{>{\centering\arraybackslash\hsize=1.1\hsize}X}{#1}}
\usepackage{siunitx}

\begin{document}

\begin{table}[h!]
\centering
\hrule height 1pt\smallskip
\caption{The percentages of all three cases of paired-end read alignments by HMMER and Short-Pair for the RNA-Seq data. HMMER w/o filtration" : running HMMER by turning off all filtration steps. HMMER GA cutoff": applying HMMER with gathering thresholds.}
\label{tab:ArabThreeCases2}
\begin{tabularx}{\linewidth}{>{\hsize=0.6\hsize}X
*{4}{S[table-format=2.2,
table-space-text-post=\,\%]<{\,\%}}
}
\toprule
Case    &   \mc{A,}         & \mc{B,}           & \mc{C,}           & \mc{D}    \cr
& \mc{$E$-value 10} & \mc{w/o filtration\par
$E$-value 10} & \mc{GA cutoff}    & \mc{}     \cr
\midrule

Case 1  &    34.51          &   32.83           &   22.51           & 0.42      \cr
Case 2  &    28.42          &   31.58           &   8.84            & 62.51     \cr
Case 3  &    37.07          &   35.59           &   68.65           & 37.07     \cr
\bottomrule
\end{tabularx}
\end{table}
\end{document}